Sword Art Online: Hard Mode
by A New Username
Summary: An alternate universe that explores what would change if the artificial intelligence programs that ran everything in Sword Art Online were all on par with human intelligence. One-hundred-thousand first release players will experience these deadly changes firsthand. Lots and lots of death, female Kirito, yuri Asu(f)KiriPhilia.
1. Prologue: Moral Questions

**Author's Note**

 **This is largely conceived after reading a story I missed the initial release of. Somebody else tried their hand at gender-bending Kirito, though he didn't decide to go down the yuri path – yet, though I hope he eventually does if he continues.**

 **I'm talking about "ALfheim Online: Hard Mode" by Insert New Name Here, along with a few of his other stories. The name gave me the idea for this premise, and some of his other works and how they handled dual-wielding gave me the idea for how to make my female Kirito dual-wield right away.**

 **The general idea this story is based on is the slight alteration of game mechanics in regards to weapon styles (wielding two weapons simultaneously is an option for everyone right at the start, but is understandably hard to pull off effectively, and there are no skills exclusively for multi-weapon builds). Also, and this is the main thing, the considerable increase in difficulty that SAO would have undergone if the AIs of all NPCs and monsters alike were on par with human intellect.**

 **Warnings for this story:**

 **Female Kirito. Obviously, because I don't do stories with male leads. Ever.**

 **OP main character. Not so noticeable right away, but it will be in the future.**

 **Smart main character. Because you have to be really smart in order to survive here, and canon Kirito was smart anyway. Still a warning because I'm making this gender-bend quite a bit smarter than canon Kirito.**

 **Yuri. Because, you know, I just can't write hetero romance at this point.**

 **Lots and lots of character death. After all, anyone who isn't known for their intellect, such as Kibaou, would be slaughtered mercilessly in this AU. So yeah, one thorn out of Kiriko's side.**

 **That's it. This author note is getting too long, but most of that needed to be said. I'll let you read now.**

* * *

Sword Art Online: Hard Mode

Prologue: Moral Questions

* * *

If you don't fight with your head, you'll be massacred. That's the creed I lived by for the past two months. It took more than learning powerful skills to beat these monsters. Much more. It was a constant struggle to outwit your opponents into losing their HP, because wildly swinging your sword around wouldn't do anything but get you stunned from your foe's parry.

If it were a normal game, this kind of challenge would be exciting to face. But this game, the world's first VRMMO, Sword Art Online, lost any hope of being normal on the day its official service began. With the creator's own proclamation, everything changed. It stopped being a fun, challenging game that took away your attention and time from the real world, and instead became a prison that trapped a hundred thousand players in its grand stage against their will.

With real death as the penalty for losing all your HP, this prison stole away our hopes. The only way to escape was to clear the game, which only worsened morale. Some committed suicide out of disbelief or despair. Some went out to challenge the game, only to die to the lowest-tier mobs because they underestimated the incredibly high-level AI programs that ran everything in the game.

But… there were those who survived those first mobs. There were players strong and smart enough to brave the danger and move forward. Determined enough to persevere through the mountainous obstacles and attempt to clear the impossible death trap this world had become.

This is the story of those players, told by one of them. I am Kirigaya Kimiko, in-game name Kiriko, and this is the story of my struggles as one of the clearers of «Aincrad».

A dull, gray, rusted sword closed in on my left shoulder, right below the baseline of my neck. I blocked with my left sword effortlessly, redirecting the blow upwards as my right blade came in for a counterattack.

With a satisfying slight resistance, I tore my right sword through the wide open chest of my opponent, knocking it back a few centimeters as its HP dropped considerably. My foe released a blood-curdling scream upon its loss of life as a red damage line appeared in the wake of my blade.

The AI monster in front of me, a level-eight humanoid mob known as a «Kobold Knight», was one of the stronger mobs in the first floor. It used an arming sword in its right hand, and the level-nine ones a level of the labyrinth up would carry shields in their left hands. For that reason, I decided to stay on this level, right up until the EXP gain from killing them passed its peak. The shield-using kobolds on the next level were not only of a higher level, but also had a slightly more intelligent AI that made them incredibly hard to kill with just a solo player, even after their higher stats stopped being threatening. Simply put, they knew how to use their shields better than most players did at this point, and that put a dual-wielder like me at a slight disadvantage.

"You'll pay for that, intruder fiend! You won't get past me!" the kobold shouted at me through its long, wolf-like muzzle, though over half its HP was already depleted from my constant strikes and counters.

He made himself sound like he was fighting for a noble cause – to defend the castle of his master, the boss of the first floor, from a foreign invader. In reality, he was an opposing force whose mere presence stood in the way of the escape of several tens of thousands of players. His words just now were pre-programmed to be uttered when his health dipped below the halfway mark, but before the yellowed bar dipped into the red, or the quarter mark, and his attack patterns changed. They didn't mean much other than that.

Or at least, that's what I told myself so I didn't feel bad about slaughtering an intelligent existence. Besides, even when I killed this one, another would spawn in due time to take its place. It wouldn't be missed, or even have its existence acknowledged by anyone other than the one girl who defeated it.

But at the same time, this one would be different from the one that took its place. This kobold's artificial intelligence program had learned a lot about my moves in the short time we had exchanged blows with each other. And because it learned about them, it also learned ways to counter each of them, forcing me to change my fighting style constantly in order to outmatch it.

But the data that this kobold gathered from my moves would not be transferred to its successor. It would be discarded, as if to prove that this kobold had its own unique existence in this world, this virtual reality setting. The beast-man that would take this one's place and position would be a "clean" AI, one that had never fought another being in its short lifespan, until someone else who braved the labyrinth came to challenge it.

Which posed the question: were my actions against this kobold, a living, intelligent existence in this world, unjust? Was I committing a crime by inflicting harm on another intelligent being? Though my cursor remained green after attacking this humanoid monster, there were some things that the system alone couldn't quite comprehend.

But no, that wasn't quite right. Based on the creator's own message to all the players at the start of the game, we had to face these intelligent beings and kill them in order to move on and eventually free ourselves from this cruel prison. So by virtue of the creator of this world, there was nothing wrong with slaying these things to grow stronger, so that I stood a chance against the boss of floor one.

With that thought at the front of my mind, I put my left sword atop my shoulder, setting it into the position necessary to activate a kind of attack unique to the fights of this world – a sword skill. In less than a second, I released the starter skill, «Slant», and my white-shimmering sword tore diagonally into my enemy's torso.

While my right arm remained relatively unaffected by the system assist of the skill, I moved my other blade into a position centimeters above my right shoulder. As my left foot moved back, the skill motion for my «Slant» stopped, and I almost fell victim to a short, involuntary pause in movement – called a «Post-Motion Delay».

But just before the delay began, my right sword began to glow a bright blue, signifying the startup animation of another skill – this time another starter, «Vertical». This was the reason I chose to use two swords. This technique that cancelled out the post-motion delay of sword skills by chaining them into new ones had saved me from defeat many times since I conceived it long ago.

My right blade came down hard on the defenseless kobold's head, ripping through it and depleting the last of its HP. Just before it died, the beast-man whispered one last thing for only me to hear.

"Curse you, intruder…!"

With such a hate-filled parting message, the unnamed Kobold Knight shattered into a rainbow of polygonal fragments that blew away in the slight draft of the labyrinth.

 _It's… over. I survived again._

I panted lightly as I sheathed my two blades in their scabbards tied to my waist. They slid in effortlessly with a nice, clean sound effect. One completely different from the sound effect generated by my blades cutting through virtual flesh.

I knew I would probably have to head back in a few hours. I had already been in the labyrinth for at least twelve hours, having gotten up incredibly early due to nightmares. I'd probably fight two or three more Kobolds, individually of course, then make my way back down to the bottom of the labyrinth and head for the closest town.

As my concentration on the current situation wandered, I began wondering how the friend I made on day one was doing. An older male by the in-game name of Klein. I wondered if he and his friends were safe. I hoped that they were, but I couldn't help but speculate that one or two of them had died in the two months we had been trapped here.

 _Klein… please, keep living. Even if it's just you._

As I walked over to a small room to catch my breath, I began reminiscing. I thought back to the day all of this began, before the wonderfully-knit fantasy of deception fell apart at the seams.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **Unlike Insert and his ALO: Hard Mode, I'm going to continue this if it kills me. The idea came to me like lightning and only got hotter from there. Plus, anything past chapter one of this counts as an update, not a new story, which makes me safe in that regard.**

 **So, what do you guys think so far? Granted, you haven't seen very much of just how terrifyingly lifelike the NPCs and mobs of this game can be yet, since I started from floor one. Trust me, it only gets harder from here.**

 **By the way, anybody notice how I eliminated the possibility of the large time-skips that were inevitable in my claim to fame, GGO: The Swordswoman? By starting the narration pre-flashback at an earlier point, I closed the incredible gap that threatened the continuity of my first work. That was intentional, trust me.**

 **Anyway, I'd love to hear some thoughts on this prologue. Yes, I know it's short, but it's only the beginning, so I figured it would be fine as long as I made chapter one (and possibly two) top four-thousand words. And trust me, they will. Easily.**

 **Well, if you have time, please review this piece. I think it was decent, not quite on the level of its inspiration, but not that bad, either. But what do you think? I've love to know.**

 **I should be off soon. I suppose I'll see some of you next chapter!**


	2. I: The First Day, Part I

**Author's Note**

 **Man, this was long! I know I said I'd make chapters one and two top four-thousand words, but I really didn't see a six-k one coming! And to think I did it all in two days…! I'm gonna need a break after this.**

 **That said, I kinda paraphrased some parts from SAO light novel volume one and its first flashback. I like to think I improved on them, and there are still a lot of completely new/original scenes and motivations, but I can't really do much about how similar to light novel volume one it has to be. Probably about half of what's here was paraphrased, not copy-pasted, from the flashback chapters towards that novel's beginning.**

 **Well, another thing I should probably mention: due to the considerable increase in difficulty, I actually made SAO less than one-hundred floors. Otherwise, it would take them way too long just to get to floor fifty, which is only halfway up. The specifics of the floor number change will be mentioned once in the text of this chapter, and multiple times in the next, so watch out for that.**

 **I'll let you read now. I need to work on something else or I'll die from overworking myself on a single story… damn, that would totally suck. Unless I possessed the internet as a ghost, in which case that'd be awesome.**

 **EDIT: I removed a sort of repeated paragraph about the Nerve Gear that Chaosrin mentioned. Sorry and thanks for the heads up! I repeated it because word shut down and lost about three-hundred words due to the lack of an auto-save, starting with what I thought to be that paragraph. But as it apparently turns out, the word loss started with the next one, which I didn't notice, and therefore, one paragraph got written out twice. I just took it out, so thanks for telling me, Chaosrin!**

* * *

Sword Art Online Hard Mode

Chapter One: The First Day, Part I

* * *

 _I panted lightly as I sheathed my two blades in their scabbards tied to my waist. They slid in effortlessly with a nice, clean sound effect. One completely different from the sound effect generated by my blades cutting through virtual flesh._

 _I knew I would probably have to head back in a few hours. I had already been in the labyrinth for at least twelve hours, having gotten up incredibly early due to nightmares. I'd probably fight two or three more Kobolds, individually of course, then make my way back down to the bottom of the labyrinth and head for the closest town._

 _As my concentration on the current situation wandered, I began wondering how the friend I made on day one was doing. An older male by the in-game name of Klein. I wondered if he and his friends were safe. I hoped that they were, but I couldn't help but speculate that one or two of them had died in the two months we had been trapped here._

Klein… please, keep living. Even if it's just you.

 _As I walked over to a small room to catch my breath, I began reminiscing. I thought back to the day all of this began, before the wonderfully-knit fantasy of deception fell apart at the seams._

* * *

"Guh!"

With a grunt of surprise, a teenage boy with red hair flew across the green landscape, landing on his rear for about the fifth time. The green bar next to his head, a representation of his in-game life force known as an "HP bar", showed that his health had just plunged below the quarter mark and into the 'red' after the last humiliating blow dealt to him.

The one who sent him flying snorted triumphantly, shaking its snout from side to side. Its blue fur ruffled at bit in the light breeze, and it dug its hooves into the ground as it prepared for another charging head-butt with its long, white tusks.

The teen's opponent, who so sorely outclassed him in battle strategy, was a low-level monster, one of the weakest on floor one. Known as a «Frenzied Boar», the non-humanoid mob had one of the lowest-leveled AIs in the game – equivalent to that of an average late primary school child. But all of that intelligence concentrated on a single thing, battle, which meant that the blue boar with bottom-rung stats could effectively defeat humans much older than its AI's projected mental age.

"Pfft!" I couldn't help but crack up at the utter defeat of the red-haired teen. I walked between him and the boar, drawing the two starting swords that cost most of my money from their scabbards at my sides. "Come on, man. Use your head, why don't you? Some basic strategy is all you need to beat one of these."

My voice came out much more masculine than in real life – after all, in the real, I was a girl, but in this game, my avatar was male. I cross-played as the opposite gender to avoid getting asked out by people I barely knew, something that happened a lot in real life.

I still went by the name 'Kiriko', since I couldn't come up with anything better on the spot when I had to name my avatar. Despite the female name which combined parts of both my real-life names, I edited my mannerisms so that nobody would ever guess I was a cross-player.

"Hey, bug off! You're not the one fighting that thing!" the redhead behind me shouted lamely, panting slightly.

"Fine then, I'll show you how it's done," I told him, sheathing my left sword for just a moment to grab something from my belt. "Here, take a potion and relax."

I tossed a small item back to him before drawing my left sword once more. The advantage to an effective dual-wielding style, which could be quite hard to master in most cases, was the fact that most of the AIs on the first several floors were only programmed to know how to block and parry from a single weapon at a time. A second sword striking right after or simultaneously to the first could throw off their AI long enough to defeat them, in most cases.

Unfortunately, there were no sword skills, powerful attacks with predetermined movements, exclusively for multi-weapon builds. You could still use the skills from each individual weapon's skillset, though, which mitigated the damage done to such builds.

Anyway, I now stood, weapons drawn, between the «Frenzied Boar» and its target. The blue wild pig's aggro would soon change to me, because I brandished my blades at it, and the redheaded teen didn't inflict enough damage on it to gain a sustainable aggro level.

The boar's attention drew to me just as I had expected, and with little warning, it charged. I put my left sword out in front of me horizontally, spreading out my feet so that my left positioned itself in front, and my right in back. I took a deep breath, loosening my virtual muscles in order to calm my nerves.

At the moment before impact, I pushed my horizontal left blade out to meet its tusks. The action registered as a parry by the system's judgment, and the blue boar staggered back, a small lightning icon flashing next to its almost-full HP bar – the symbol of one of the many status effects in Sword Art Online, «Stun». But I wasn't done just yet.

"Watch this," I commanded the one sitting behind me. As I had parried the charge attack of my blue-furred opponent, I had also raised my right blade over my shoulder, letting it sit there as a blue light gathered from it.

Now, the light reached its peak just as the stun began to take effect. I felt my body begin to move on its own in the next movement, the system assist having taken over for the launch of the sword skill, «Vertical». I decided to push with my own strength to add to the damage, making my arm move even faster towards the head of the stunned boar.

With a bloodying sound effect, like something tearing through fresh meat, my glowing blade slashed straight through the head of my opponent. It released a high-pitched squeal, and the HP bar to the right of its head lost about forty-five percent, leaving its grand total at just under forty percent – Klein had done about eight percent from blind sword swings, and my parry inflicted three percent of its HP in damage.

Luckily for me, I wouldn't have to deal with the short delay in movement that usually resulted from the use of a skill. While my «Vertical» made contact with the Frenzied Boar's head, I put my left blade in a position similar to the starting position to the recently-used skill, but slightly different, and without as much footwork involved. My left sword began to glow a bright blue, the charge-up animation cancelling out the post-motion delay of my previous skill.

I let it loose a second later, once again using my own power to boost the speed and power of the system assist by pushing the sword along the correct path. My forty-five degree diagonal skill, «Slant», tore through the head of my foe, right through its right eye and then its lower-left snout after it.

The second, unexpected sword skill drained the last of my opponent's HP in one go. The bar itself gained a cracking visual effect before disappearing from its spot, and finally, the Frenzied Boar shattered into an array of polygonal shards the color of a whitish rainbow. The fragments of the once fearsome beast scattered in the same light breeze that ruffled my avatar's short, black hair.

I turned around to face my companion, who had stood up in the past few seconds. "Show off," he grumbled playfully, giving me a small smile to show he was joking.

"I'm telling you, all you need is some basic strategy," I repeated myself, pointing over to where I saw a blue light appearing about three meters away. It subsided in a little under a second, leaving another blue-furred boar in its wake. "I already showed you how to use sword skills in that battle, now you try some on that one over there. Your curved sword has more damage than my one-handed swords do individually, so you should be able to finish it with one well-rounded skill if you time it right."

What I meant by well-rounded was the stat scaling. All sword skills scaled off of certain stats for damage calculation, along with a separate basic damage multiplier. The stats they went by differed from skill to skill, but they all chose from four options: Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, and Agility, each of which got a slight boost on level up, along with the option to raise it further through stat point distribution. Well-rounded skills were ones that scaled a bit off of every stat – and right now, most players wouldn't have any stats much higher than others. This made these rather uncommon skills the best for starting players without any particular stats that rose above the rest. And it just so happened that curved swords had an 'all stats 15%' starter skill that could do massive damage for starting players, but would be quickly outclassed once the primary stats for a player's chosen build were raised higher than the less important ones.

I saw him open his menu with a flick of his right thumb and index finger, then tab over to the sword skills page. Of course, I didn't actually 'see' his menu – players could only see their own menus for privacy reasons – but I could guess what he was doing by the motions of his hands.

I could tell the cogs of his brain had started turning. He was definitely forming a strategy, and the determined gleam in his eyes showed that he knew what he was doing. I decided to sit back and watch this one, and not intervene – after all, after drinking the potion I offered him, he was back to over half health… enough to take down one of those boars easily if he fought with his head.

He spread out his feet and lowered his stance, putting the short, curved, silver blade in his right hand over his shoulder. As the orange glow began collecting around his sword, I recognized the position as the startup position for a charge-type skill, «Reaver». The skill itself was Strength-based at STR 30%, if I recalled from my experimental phase months ago, and would cover the distance to the boar and hit it before the creature could target him for brandishing a blade against it.

 _Good call for a battle-starter, Klein,_ I mentally praised the redheaded teen. Back when he confronted me about teaching him some basics for this game right after I logged on, I had doubted his potential. He just seemed too excitable. But now, I could tell that when he was pushed into the right frame of mind, he would go far. He had potential, and I knew he wouldn't waste it.

"Raaah!" With a furious battle cry, my companion launched his charge-type skill, and his second battle in «Aincrad» began.

* * *

Several tens of battles and a tenth as many potions later, we decided to stop for a while. The sun had started to set, casting a beautiful red glow upon the near-endlessly stretching plains we inhabited. I observed the scenery a bit as my partner sat and panted, having been forced to do most of the work for the sake of 'learning' – and, honestly, my own laziness. As long as we were party members, I would get the same EXP he did, regardless of battle participation, so I didn't need to do a thing if he could beat them on his own.

Way up to the north, a forest began where the plains ended. A lake stretched out in vast and beautiful blue depth to the south, and I could just barely make out the stone walls that surrounded the city to the east. To the west, there lay a limitless sky that literally went on forever, with countless golden clouds drifting about – this vast expanse of air and moisture was outside of the steel castle we currently resided in.

We were at the plains that stretched to the west of the «Starting City», which was situated at the north tip of the first floor of the colossal floating castle, Aincrad. There were likely numerous players fighting monsters around here, but due to the massive size of the place, none of them were visible.

Finally having caught his breath, my redheaded partner got up, sauntering up to the spot beside me. I could see the wonder in his eyes as he observed the scenery while walking, and I kind of expected what he said to start the conversation.

"Man, no matter how many times I look at all this stuff, I still can't believe that we're inside a game," he absently commented, still paying more attention to the world around us than the male avatar next to him.

Before I could correct him about what the devices that brought our consciousness here – the «Nerve Gear» – really did, he said something else that momentarily caught me off guard.

"But man, who'd have expected to run into a beta-tester right after logging on? And such a slave-driving one at that!" this time, he focused fully on my shocked avatar as he spoke. "I thought I would die at least three times!"

"What?" I finally coaxed the solitary word out after a few seconds of silence. I really needed better people skills. "But I—"

"But you still saved me every time I was in real danger," he admitted to what I had wanted to say myself with a cheeky grin. "So I guess you're all right. Besides, because of your training, we already leveled up once!"

We had indeed each leveled up to level two during my apparent 'slave-driving' sessions. It made the perfect opportunity for me to teach the teen about stat points, and where to distribute the three gained with each new level. By the time we were done, the color of the sky had already began to redden into its current state, but Klein insisted that we hunt just a bit more before calling it a night.

"I'm so glad I was born in this era, though…" he continued on his earlier topic, coaxing a small smile out of me. "After all, it's because I was born in this time that I got to play SAO and meet an awesome dude like you!"

My smile faltered. "How do you know? How do you know I'm 'awesome'?" _How do you know I'm a 'dude'?_ That was the question I really wanted to ask. I always kind of felt insecure about using a male avatar to conceal my real gender. People just believed it too easily, and they treated me completely different from what I was used to in the real. It was a nice change from constant date requests and confessions based on my looks alone, but… it kind of felt lonely, too, to keep a secret like this from everyone I met so easily.

He raised his head up to look at the sky as he put a hand to his chin, as if stroking a beard that wasn't there. "How do I put it…? Well, when I first saw you log on and say 'I'm back,' you looked like a man on a mission. I figured you must've been from the beta test by the way you knew exactly where to go the whole time you ran.

"But when I caught up to you and asked you to help me out," he continued his story of earlier in the day, looking to me with an appreciative smile. "You barely even hesitated in agreeing to help me. You didn't mind at all that I probably slowed down your hunting pace, and even gave me great tips! You're an awesome, friendly guy, through and through!"

Now I felt kind of bad for my thoughts when we first met. Honestly, my lack of hesitation was because I took one look at the weapon he chose (his weapon type did more damage than mine) and thought that I could teach him and then make him do all the work for a level or two, until my one-handed sword skill leveled up enough for some better attacks. Those snap judgments were made in less than a second, which is why he assumed I hesitated just a little before I agreed and learned of his excitable nature.

"Hey, no problem," I did my best to hide my guilt about my first intentions with a smile and thumps-up. "Besides, it was fun talking to you. And we got a level out of the deal."

"Yeah, we did," the redhead made it sound like the most badass thing in the world with his 'I've accomplished something amazing' smug tone. "And it really showed, too! Those boars die in one skill now!"

The emersion back into game talk reminded me of something I wanted to ask him. He seemed way too excited to play this game. Almost like…

"Hey, Klein," I decided to go for it and ask away, turning my full attention to him. "Is this your first time playing a game on the Nerve Gear?"

The Nerve Gear. That was the name of the hardware that drove this VRMMORPG, «Sword Art Online». And its basic structure was totally different from every other older gaming device.

Unlike the old style of man-machine interface hardware such as flat-screen monitors or handheld controllers, the Nerve Gear only had a single interface: a streamlined helmet-like device that covered the vast majority of the head, with a visor that could display holograms for simple things like the time covering the eyes.

Inside, there were countless signal transceivers. By using the electronic signals sent out by those transceivers, the headgear accessed the user's brain itself. By its ability to reroute the user's senses and actions, the user of a Nerve Gear wouldn't see or hear with their eyes or ears; the signals went directly from the interface to the brain, and the gear intercepted any actions performed by the user to make them only happen in-game. In addition, the machine could not only access sight and sound, but touch, taste and smell as well. All five senses became controlled by the device.

After slipping the Nerve Gear on, locking a small, soft strap under your chin, and speaking the initiation command, 'Link Start', all noise fades away and you become enveloped in darkness. Then, as soon as you pass through the rainbow-colored circle that appears in the middle, you'll find yourself in another world made entirely of data.

This machine started selling in May, 2022, almost half a year ago. It successfully created a 'virtual reality' for the first time. The electronics company that created the Nerve Gear called the act of linking into the virtual reality a «Full Dive».

As it was a total seclusion from normal reality, it really fit the word, 'full'. With both senses and actions intercepted and interpreted by the Nerve Gear, all the players, including Klein and I…

We had completely leapt into the game.

The effect of this experience captivated me and many similar gamers, to the point we were sure we could never go back to the 'next best things' like motion-sensors for gaming.

It was for this reason that I suspected the teen before me of being a first-time player of games on this device. He just seemed too excited by the whole concept. Maybe he hadn't even owned a Nerve Gear before SAO, I didn't know.

"Yeah, it is," Klein's confirmation brought me out of my musings. Honestly, with a serious expression on his face, he actually looked pretty cool. Like an actor from a historical play, in a way. Of course, this likely didn't look like him at all in the real world. This appearance was an avatar created from nothing, based solely on a series of options given to the player for various features.

Although, I probably wasn't much better. I designed my avatar to look like a moderately handsome yet highly capable guy from some fantasy anime I saw a while back. The size of my avatar was about the same as my real body so that it felt natural to move around in, but it didn't change the fact that I made myself a completely different gender… which was more than this guy could say. His mannerisms were strictly boyish, giving off the impression of a boy in his late teens, or maybe a slightly childish young adult male.

"Well, to be more accurate, I kinda rushed out and bought the hardware to play SAO right after I managed to score one of my regular game store's last copies," he decided to elaborate, putting a nervous hand on the back of his neck. "I guess I was pretty lucky to get one of the one-hundred-thousand first release copies… but you were ten times as lucky to get a spot in the beta test! Only ten-thousand people got to do that!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right," I replied without missing a beat, giving a nervous smile as I looked to the ground.

I remembered the excitement and enthusiasm that Sword Art Online created when it was announced on the media like it was yesterday.

The Nerve Gear had realized the future foundation for gaming with its Full Dive technology. However, due to the innovation of the machine itself, only boring, unremarkable titles were released for the all-important software. They were all puzzles, education-related or environmental-type games, which caused serious discontent among technologically-inclined hardcore gamers such as myself.

Nerve Gear can truly render a virtual reality. So the fact that you could only walk a hundred meters before hitting a wall in the worlds created for it was a serious letdown. It was unavoidable that hardcore gamers like me, who became deeply absorbed in the experience of being in the game, started anticipating a certain genre to hit the shelves.

We were waiting for a network game, the kind that let millions of players log in and raise, fight with and live with a character of their very own – that is to say, an MMORPG. Just when the anticipation and craving reached its limit, the first VRMMORPG was announced right on cue, Sword Art Online. The game's stage was a floating castle of seventy-five floors, chock full of monsters and NPCs with humanoid intelligence and response patterns.

The players lived in a medieval world with forests and lakes, relying only on their sword (or in my case, two swords), brain and drive to discover the route to the next floor, defeat countless monsters as smart as they were, and make their way endlessly to the top.

«Magic», considered an indispensable part of most fantasy RPGs, was boldly left out of the design. A seemingly endless number of skills, called «Sword Skills», were created. The reason given was to let players experience the feeling of fighting with your own body through Full Dive as much as possible.

Skills were varied, including production skills, such as smithing, leatherworking and sewing, and everyday skills, such as fishing, cooking and playing music, allowing the player to not only adventure in the game, but also 'live' in it. If they wanted, and if their skill levels were high enough, they could even buy or build a house and live as shepherds.

As all this information was revealed, gamers' enthusiasm continued to rapidly grow.

The beta test only recruited ten-thousand testers, a tenth of the broadcasted first release. It's said that over a million people volunteered from all over the country, which actually accounted for more than the number of Nerve Gears sold at the time. A first experience of true good luck was the only reason I slipped through the narrow gap and got picked. Or, that's what I'd like to believe, but the actual reason was a bit more practical. I got picked because of my second job, in which I bought and reviewed computers, among other electronic things. One of the developers actually saw my review of the Nerve Gear, which garnered tens of millions of hits, and offered me a position as a beta tester for SAO if I would do a review of the beta once it ended. Of course, I had already sent an application, but I still accepted his offer so I got an assured acceptance.

The two months of beta testing were like a dream. I put both my jobs on hold for it, and even at school, I thought of nothing but my skillset, equipment, and stock of items. I started biking home for better speed as soon as school ended, and dived into the game until dawn. It was safe to say that my sleeping hours seriously decreased during that time, but I didn't care at all.

The test ended in what seemed like the blink of an eye. On the day my character was reset, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss, as if half of my true self had been cut away. But fortunately for me, all was not lost. As a beta-tester, I got exclusive first rights to pre-order the game's official release. And trust me, that I certainly did.

Of course, that left me with a review to write. My electronics reviews were renowned across the country for being completely impartial. If something sucked, I would say so with projectile honesty. If something was good, I would definitely mention it without restraint. When I reviewed the Nerve Gear, I said a lot of things about 'wasted potential', and the like, but still praised its potential itself. But SAO used that potential to the fullest, something I had never seen before. My review of it was probably the most positive one I had ever done.

And today, November 6th, 2022, Sunday.

Sword Art Online, having finished its final preparations, officially started its online service at one PM. Of course, I had been waiting for the better part of an hour, and I logged in without a second's delay. When I checked the server a mere fifteen seconds later, over ninety-thousand players had already logged on. It seemed as if all the people who had been lucky enough to get their hands on the first release copy felt the same as I did. All the online shopping site announced they were sold out less than ten seconds after they went on sale. The offline sales, which started the day before service, created lines of people who queued up for six days, creating enough of a disturbance in traffic to get on the news. This meant that all of the players logged on, all of those one-hundred-thousand people who got their hands on a copy, must have been serious game addicts.

Klein's actions showed it clearly as well. Right after I logged onto SAO, I whispered something about being back and broke into a run towards the shopping district, checking the server without even slowing down. Apparently, Klein had just arrived himself when he noticed my appearance, and he'd chased after me until I finally reached my destination and slowed, unable to catch up before then due to our equal Agility stats.

When I noticed him, he was panting. Unlike raw stats like speed or power, which were determined by numbers and unaffected by real life ability, a player's overall stamina transferred almost directly from real life body type and health, though it could be increased by adding to the Vitality stat. I got a lot of physical exercise IRL, so I could keep up a stable run at top speed for my avatar for a little over a minute with beginning stats before starting to slow down.

Once he caught his breath, he informed me he figured out my beta-tester status and begged me to teach him some things about the game. I immediately looked at the default weapon he had, finding a one-handed curved sword (the game let us choose a starting weapon before we spawned for the first time, though the weakest ones bought in stores were actually stronger). I then decided to let him tag along for the sake of making him do the work once he figured out how to fight properly in the game. What he saw as a nice acceptance of his enthusiastic request was really just because I wanted to use him for a bit.

After we bought better weapons, we ended up forming a party, sealing the deal I had made with him in my mind. That's how we ended up in the current situation, and it's also the source of my guilt after he still didn't figure out my true intentions.

To tell the truth, I didn't get along with people at all in real life; in games, perhaps even less so. Because of my tendency to be brutally honest in every situation, I alienated myself from everyone around me. As a result, most of the relationships I made an effort to maintain were out of a need of something they provided. In other words, to keep myself at a distance from people, I outright used them with little regard for how they would feel about it or me. Even my family fell victim to this as time went on.

During the beta test period, I got to know a few people, but I kept the relationships down to a 'need-need' basis, so I didn't have anyone I could really call a friend. Everyone I maintained contact with likely saw it the same way: that they only associated with me because they needed something I possessed, be it strength, intellect, strategy, or even just items.

But Klein, in all of his gullible glory, had a side to him that grew on me fast. I thought that just maybe, I had found someone I could get along with in him.

"So, do you want to keep hunting a little more?" I asked him, forcing myself out of my own thoughts before he began to think I was a total weirdo who only spoke once every several minutes. "We probably won't gain another level if we just fight the boars again, but there are a few level-two mobs nearby that we'd be clear to tackle together."

This time, I meant as a team, rather than just me making him fight, but I didn't say all that. Instead, I just let the implications of a solitary word, 'together', do the talking for me.

"Sure, you bet!" he replied before his face took on a look of realization, then darkened as he turned his head down. "Is what I want to say, but…"

I noticed his eyes looking even further down, to the bottom-right of his vision. Right where the clock appeared on every player's display. He must have been checking the time. I absentmindedly looked at my own clock and noted the time to be just after five-twenty.

"Well, I should probably log off and eat," he finally elaborated, looking back up to me guiltily as he once again moved a hand to stroke an imaginary beard. It occurred to me that he probably had facial hair in the real, based on that habit. "I kinda ordered a pizza for delivery at five-thirty."

"You thought of everything," I lightly praised, not really able to think of much else to say.

Klein puffed out his chest, giving me a bold double thumbs-up. "Of course!" he boasted proudly. "I promised to meet some buds from another game at the Starting City in a little bit. I could introduce them to you and you could register them as friends. That way you could always send us messages. How about it?"

"I… uh…" I mumbled without thinking about the consequences.

I got along with Klein pretty well, but the case would likely be different for his friends. I was almost certain I would fall out with them, and, as a result, Klein as well. And I knew that going into the lion's den with a mindset that expects to be eaten was the same as offering yourself as food. The same logic applied to this social situation, if you thought about it for a bit.

"I…" I really didn't know what call to make on this one. If I declined, we might have a falling out anyhow, or even just slowly drift apart. It's not like we ever became friends, anyway, so it wouldn't be that hard to conceive.

The redhead seemed to understand the reasoning behind my hesitation intuitively. He put a hand behind his neck and rubbed it before speaking in a slightly subdued tone for a boisterous guy like him. "Ah, I didn't mean to force you or anything. There'll be plenty of chances to introduce you another time, anyway."

"Yeah…" I couldn't help but smile bitterly at myself as I held my left arm in my right hand, a nervous habit of mine. "Sorry, and thanks."

"Hey, I should be the one thanking you!" he loudly proclaimed, making me look to him in slight shock. "I totally brought you out of your comfort zone when I asked you for help, right? I figured it out a while ago, but you really give off a 'solo player' vibe. But you still agreed to help me despite that, so… thanks."

Ignoring the stab of guilt at his determination of my intentions, I couldn't help but marvel at the redhead's ability to always see the good in people. He really was… a nice guy.

He smiled and took another look at the clock. "Well, I'll log off for a bit. Thanks a lot, Kiriko. Be seeing ya."

His mention of my avatar's female name reminded me of one of the conditions for my beta copy: that I use the same handle I used for my electronics reviews online. Seeing as I was female IRL, it was only natural that a combination of the characters in my real-life full name added up to another female name. I had to curse myself for not choosing a more creative, gender-neutral name for my net presence.

But I didn't get more than a second to dwell on my poor life choices before an extended hand made its way into my personal space bubble. Klein had put it out for me to shake, it seemed. It then occurred to me that he'd be a great leader in another game, but I dismissed the thought as I shook his hand. This excitable guy, a guild leader? Pfft, no way in hell.

"Yeah," I said, feeling just a bit lighter from the way things ended to well. "See you around."

We each let go of the other's hand simultaneously. And then, just a few seconds later, the point where everything crashed down came. The point where Aincrad – no, Sword Art Online itself – stopped being just a fun, mentally challenging game for me.

Klein stepped back a bit, put his right index finger and thumb together, and pulled downwards, the action that would open the main menu window. Immediately afterwards, there was a ringing sound effect as a purple rectangle undoubtedly appeared for only him to see.

I moved a bit myself and sat on the lone rock in this plains area, opening my own menu as well, though for a different purpose. I decided to organize all the drops I gained from our sessions of boar-hunting. But then, right before I tabbed over to my inventory…

Klein's words, spoken in a slightly confused tone, rang loud and clear to my ears.

"Eh? What's this…? There's no 'log out' button."

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **How many of you were expecting me to end it right here? I'm sure some of you were, based on what I've said in the prologue (that the first** _ **two**_ **chapters would top four-k, not just the first one chapter). Or possibly, you realized it as you got close to the end and noticed where I was at already…? Well, whatever.**

 **By the way, I'd love to hear some thoughts on the changes I've made from the original text. I included different motivations, different scenes or parts of scenes, as well as some other juicy tidbits. I wonder if anyone would be interested in finding all the changes I made from the text I used as reference material? But that might take a while, so I won't request it.**

 **So, as always, reviews are welcome! Just don't bash me for using someone else's work as reference material to paraphrase, and we'll be golden! If you can find another thing to bash/criticize (like how it gets boring towards the end, but that's a personal opinion), go on ahead! Just please do so constructively, rather than destructively.**

 **One last thing: I don't plan for Kiriko to keep the 'long monologue' habit of hers and her canon counterpart's for very long. It'll get beaten out of her pretty fast, because you can't space out like that in real combat and expect to not get stabbed in the face by an opponent taking the perfect chance you literally handed them on a silver platter. And trust me, that comes from the experience of a real-life dual sword-fighter with ADD.**

 **All right, I need to get going. It's post two in the morning for me, and my sleep cycle dictates that I'll likely pass out in around three hours. So I figure I'll game the rest of the night away after a little more work on something other than this behemoth.**

 **See you all next chapter!**


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